XGH, please help me, please!!!

[A few people have written to me over the past few months (actually years) with very similar emails. The emails were written in confidence, so rather than post them, I compiled this based on an amalgamation of these emails, plus some of my own experiences. The facts in the email below might not match any one specific person, but the experiences being described are spot on. I also added explanatory comments in case non Orthodox people read this. I didn't respond to any of these emails (except in a crappy post about being happy and not worrying) and now I feel bad. What can I say to these people?]

Dear XGH,

I write to you in desperation. A few years ago I was a happy Orthodox Jew. Being Orthodox Jewish means believing in certain key things about God and the Bible, and also keeping ‘halachah’ – a strict set of rules governing pretty much everything in life – what you can eat (only kosher food), when you can sleep with your wife (only 2 weeks a month), not using electricity on Saturday, and a gazillion other rules. It may sound crazy but Orthodox Jews hardly mind keeping all these rules because they believe that they are a special people chosen by God and by keeping all these rules they will get a special place in heaven, and if they don’t keep these rules God will punish them somehow. It sounds crazy to me now when I spell this all out, but for many years I not only believed all this, I took it completely for granted, and I thought that Jews who didn’t believe all this were very ignorant and misinformed. More recently however, I started thinking about religion, and started investigating the various claims about God and the Bible. Without going into details I began to realize that my religion (in fact all religions) were almost definitely completely man made, and that there was virtually no possibility that any of it was true. This realization hit me like a ton of bricks. The rug was pulled out from under me. All of a sudden my entire lifestyle was a lie, based on nonsense. This was worse than anything I could have imagined. Relationships break up, people lose their jobs, but this seemed to be on an entirely different level. My entire identity was wrong. This seemed like a science fiction movie where the character suddenly realizes he is living in a matrix, or maybe that Jim Cary movie where he realizes his entire life is actually a fake TV set. But it was even worse than that. Some friends of mine went through a similar process, and were reasonably happy to just move on. Some of them even delighted in their new found freedom to eat non-kosher food (McDonalds!) or drive a car on Saturday. However I just can’t move on. I liked being Orthodox, I really did. Now when I go to Temple to pray it feels like a lie. I want it to be true but it isn’t. It might just possibly be true I guess, but the likelihood of that seems so remote that I just can’t get myself to believe it. I am stuck in this no mans land between atheism and Orthodoxy. I suppose you could call it agnosticism but it’s much more painful than that. It’s an endless cycle of wanting it to be true, but knowing it isn’t true, but wanting it to be true, and so on and so on. And I’m surrounded by people on both extremes – family and friends who are true believers, who not only think the religion is true but also think you would have to be crazy to not believe, and friends and colleagues who not only think it isn’t true, but who also think that you would have to be crazy to believe. I figured that maybe the transition from believer to non-believer would be painful, maybe it would take a few months or so, but this is ridiculous. It’s been a few years now and it’s as painful as ever. I can’t go forward I can’t go back. Every trip to the Temple is painful. Every time I look at my bookshelf filled with Jewish books that I used to love I feel a pain in my heart – I want to continue to love and learn these books, but I can’t shake the feeling / thought that they are all nonsense. Worse than nonsense even. Losing my faith seems worse than losing a loved one. With the loss of a loved one, you bury them, you sit shiva (7 day Jewish mourning ritual), then you move on. But I can’t sit shiva for my lost religion. Every day it’s there, reminding me of my loss. It’s as if my dead loved one was lying in my living room, dead and decaying, but still here to remind me of my loss. Some friends of mine are very religious without believing in the various dogmatic beliefs; they say I should try that. But no matter how hard I try, I just can’t work up the enthusiasm. The loud voice in the back of my head keeps reminding me that this is all nonsense and a waste of time. Other friends are convinced that they have answers to all my questions – but every time I investigate their claims I find it is all nonsense, they are blinded by their biases. But yet I don’t want to walk away. Complicating things is the fact that I am now in a relationship with a religious woman. She believes, yet she is willing to marry me even though I have ‘doubts’. But what if I decide one day that I am genuinely an atheist? Is this fair? She claims she doesn’t mind and that things will work out, but I know from some married friends that marriage is hard enough without issues of religion. I am driving myself crazy with all this. Some friends say I should just stop thinking about this, and focus on other things. But how can I ignore such a fundamental part of my identity? And anyway, I can’t avoid my religion, it’s too intertwined with my family, my friends, my commuity, my entire lifestyle. And I really don’t want to just walk away, but neither do I want to live a lie. What can I do? What should I do? Am I doomed to spend the rest of my life like this? Please help me!

Sincerely,
[xxxx]